Just a place to share some thoughts

Hover Zoom

I’m not sure how best to describe Hover Zoom, an extension to Google Chrome, except that I find it indispensible!

It almost transforms your web browsing experience into 3D. (Well, at least images jump off the page at you!)

The premise is relatively simple. So often, you hit a web page and the author has done her/his very best to optimize the page so that it appears on your screen quickly. This optimization involves making thumbnails of the images on the page.

Hover Zoom, I guess, reverse engineers the process! All that you do after you’ve installed the extension is visit a page and hover your cursor over a thumbnail image. Hover Zoom then displays the image full sized.

Where I find this most helpful occurs when doing a Google or Bing image search. The results are returned in thumbnail format so that you get a sense of what they are. Simply move the cursor over the image and the larger original is displayed! Sure, you can click on the image but often that opens a new page. Hover Zoom just overlays the current page with the larger image.

Hover Zoom is definitely part of my browsing suite and I’m sure that I use it every day. Once installed, it just becomes part of the browsing experience.